


the sound of rain on tin

by luninosity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Boys Solving Each Other's Romantic Problems, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Lovecraftian, M/M, Magic, Mutual Pining, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-04-07 03:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14071971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: Okay, Bucky thought. He could deal with sudden universe-hopping. He’d seen weirder things. Hell, he himself probably counted as a weirder thing, brainwashed cryogenically frozen former legendary assassin and all.Chris, who looked like Steve, but who wasn't Steve, stared at him some more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title courtesy of Better Than Ezra's "I Do," just because I like it. :-)
> 
> Posting schedule...no real schedule. I have pieces of this one done, but not in order, so we'll see. I also don't know why it became a partial Lovecraft fusion. I did not plan that. Hmm.

Fighting was happening. Of course fighting was happening, Bucky Barnes thought, because Steve Rogers was around; and he knocked out a crazed blue-robed cultist as gently as possible and yelled words to this effect. The words ended with, “—and you didn’t say _anything_ about goddamn interdimensional portals, Steven Grant Fucking Rogers!”

“Um,” Steve said, over the comm, “I didn’t know? They weren’t supposed to be that close to—Bucky, look _out_ —”

“I got it!” Bucky said, at the same time someone else said so above his position; the someone else swooped in and kicked a cultist in the head before the blue-tinged energy weapon could go off. Sam Wilson tossed in, “You’re welcome,” taking off; Bucky yelled, “I had that one!” and threw him a very rude gesture learned by the Winter Soldier in Berlin in the mid-eighties.

Sam Wilson laughed. Bucky went back to ignoring him, equally ignoring the cultists swarming up his own parking structure, and strategically picking off, with nonlethal sleeper rounds, the men babbling in tongues and pointing weapons at Steve’s head. He did spare the time to lob a grenade into the air; one of the cultists had thrown something round and shiny at Sam. Bucky did not know what the shiny thing would do, but in this case it met his grenade and exploded, so that was that.

“I can dodge things,” Sam said. “Just so you know. I know it’s hard for you to see down there on the ground and all.”

“Some species of dung beetle can fly,” Bucky said. “Just a random fact. Trivia. Something I picked up. No, go back, Steve needs you over the entrance to the whatever the fuck that is, I’m good.”

“Steve is doing fine!” Steve said, keeping multiple cultists out of the gateway to the temple at street level, with effective arms. “They’re only human. Coulson—”

Bucky was secretly of the opinion that maybe men with protruding eyes, water-pale skin, gibbering voices, and eldritch weaponry were not exactly human. Several of them were yelling words that sounded like gibberish, _Cthulhu fhtagn_ or something like that, unless that was a sneeze.

But then again the Winter Soldier was arguably not precisely a normal human either, so what did he know? And Steve wanted them disabled, not killed, so the Winter Soldier would listen.

He tenderly incapacitated another froglike specimen of humanity. This one’d run at him with a knife.

The Winter Soldier listened well to directives. He’d learned that. Bucky Barnes trusted Steve Rogers. He knew that.

He was no longer quite sure he knew how to be human. He had not told Steve Rogers that.

Since waking up, since Shuri and Wakandan science had straightened out at least half the mess in his head, he’d been doing what he thought he should do, what his emotions wanted him to do, day by day. Steve seemed to like that. Steve’s eyes got less sad and more proud and excited when Bucky wanted things.

Bucky did want things. Bucky liked plums and gelato and all the books he had time to read and feeling warm under the heavy knitted blanket Sam’s sister had managed to make and ship to him through mysterious means, when no one was technically supposed to know where he and Steve were living.

Bucky liked Steve’s eyes all lit up and happy, setting down weight and transported into pure joy just for a second: at the mention of a retrieved memory of summer lemonade, at one of Sam’s jokes, at the time Bucky’d said _come outside with me_ after first waking.

They’d stepped onto a Wakandan balcony, a small curve outside the infirmary, barely enough for two. The world had glowed lush and rich and colorful, a tapestry of stories. Steve had been worried, asking what he needed, asking how he felt. When he’d first opened his eyes Steve’s face had been tight and worried too, that stubborn heroic repression of fear and pain.

Bucky’d said, _the air feels nice here, Steve,_ and leaned his one good arm on stone, the railing curled warm and lazy as a cat beneath his touch. Steve had stared at him for a second or two, and then said _oh_ , and taken a shy step to stand with him. They’d watched the world, and felt the air on bare skin, and breathed in weightless sunlight side by side; and the crinkle on Steve’s forehead had slowly for a moment gone away.

In the present he disarmed a few cultists—how many _were_ there?—climbing onto his parking structure, which sat next to the temple, which hulked in summer heat in the middle of downtown Atlanta, because the Southern United States apparently had a pretty damn extensive occult population with the unfortunate tendency to chant spells that kind of sort of _worked_ , at least when combined with some left-behind scraps of alien technology.

Coulson’s people were shutting down the gateway, inside the temple. Matters of physics, energy balances, beings with lots of tentacles trying to come through, and something about dead palaces and seawater. Bucky was busy. Protecting Steve. Who was protecting people, because anyone who came near the gateway got sucked in, and Steve Rogers would under no circumstances allow people to get sucked up by an interdimensional portal and fed to eerie ancient beings with lots of tentacles.

A throng of civilians had emerged from the shopping mall across the street. They were taking pictures of Steve. Bucky sighed internally. He’d take pictures of Steve Rogers too, especially in that clinging dark blue version of the suit, the one that outlined the fighting muscles and the amazing ass equally attractively. But the civilians needed protecting.

Steve was already sending Wanda that way. Good.

 _Less_ good: a knot of cultists in extra-elaborate robes, never an encouraging sign, raising voices and arms as a blue orb spun in the air above them, behind Steve’s back.

“Steve—” Dead air. A hiss. Something’d taken out communications.

Bucky paused. The Winter Soldier assessed. Sergeant James Barnes cracked a joke about the military and technology and where you could shove antique semaphore flags.

Bucky, at the edge of the parking structure, glared at cultists. “Steve!”

Nope. Nothing. Not even when he threw another grenade for attention-getting purposes. Steve turned to look at him, lips moving, no doubt shouting something about _nonlethals, remember, Buck, they’re human!_

Bucky rolled his eyes—he’d aimed for the building’s corner, Steve must’ve seen that—and yelled back, “I know, punk, would you just _goddamn listen to me?”_

Didn’t work. Never had. Felt good anyway.

Behind Steve the Blue Orb of Doom rose up, throbbing in an unpleasant way, blue and sparkly and shiny as seasick sapphires in the summer sun. Bucky said something very, very nasty in Russian, because he could, and all of his minds wholeheartedly agreed.

He got distracted by three elderly batrachian fanatics with blue glowy handguns. The no-kill order made this marginally more difficult. One shot nicked his hip, through armor. He kicked that cultist extra-hard.

Blood on his skin. On his fingertips when he touched the wound. Not much. Functional. Not a concern.

Steve was his concern. Always had been.

While he’d let himself get sidetracked, Steve was in danger. The Sparkly Orb of Ominous Anger had shot outward: right at those broad shoulders, which were preoccupied with guarding Natasha, who’d arrived with a book borrowed from some university library that’d supposedly help Coulson’s people stop the incursion. She ran through the doorway and out of sight.

No time, no time, and Steve wouldn’t hear him—

Bucky threw himself off the parking structure. Let himself fall. Sunlight skittered off his arm as he dove. Like wings.

He caught the flying blue orb just before it would’ve collided with Steve’s ridiculous rippling back. It landed squarely in the palm of his human hand; he himself landed in a breathless bruised-rib heap at Steve’s feet, and then took out a nearby gun-wielding cultist with one low deflected shot from the metal hand. _Not_ a kill, either.

Steve spun around. “Buck—where’d you even—oh shit, Bucky, you’re hurt, your leg—”

Hadn’t noticed. Pain not so much registering. Not a Hydra remnant, just the simple plain truth that Bucky Barnes would run on a broken femur to make himself into a human shield for Steve Rogers, who never watched his own damn back.

“Givin’ you a _leg_ up,” he said, “letting you win, Steve, how many crazed occult minions are you up to now—” and then he stopped, because his palm was tingling. Blue jewel somehow sunk into his skin. Spreading. Sapphire racing merrily along veins under his skin.

He shook his hand. The blue refused to dislodge.

“Bucky—!” Steve absentmindedly knocked a thrown dagger away with the shield, landed on knees beside him, grabbed his shoulders. “Tony, we need evac—”

“Comms’re dead, Steve—” Plainly Steve had also realized this; his face went tense and serious and field-commander. Bucky’d always found this disturbingly erotic, and discovered that this was still true even when he was slowly being eaten alive by glittery blue opals. Steve Rogers taking charge, made of fire and justice and compassion, went straight to his libido, and stayed there happily.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Steve said, all serious touching reliability, eyes like the world’s best search-and-rescue puppy, “Bucky, you’re gonna be fine, I promise, we can take care of this, I’m not gonna leave your side, okay, I’m right here, I’ll be here if you’re awake or if you’re asleep, I’ll be here when you wake up—”

Steve knew he hated hospitals. Of course Steve knew.

Steve knew part of why. The part everybody knew. The fist of Hydra, torture, trauma, modifications, yeah. Fair enough, Bucky thought dizzily, aware that those thoughts were turning fuzzy, disconnected. Mocking sapphire’d spread up his arm and across his chest; he could feel his heart pounding. Could see the fear Steve was trying to conceal behind heroic walls.

Bucky Barnes’d hated hospitals because they never did skinny sickly breathless Steve Rogers any good, or because they might’ve done some good but neither of them could afford the fees, or because they couldn’t take Bucky’s stupid dumb strength and pour it into Steve’s little lion body somehow.

He’d always loved Steve Rogers. Every version of himself agreed on that. They didn’t always agree on much, tiny peanut-gallery choruses of _yes you like spinach_ or _no we’re not going to kill anyone today_ or _it’s probably okay to sneak into Sam Wilson’s kitchen and replace his orange juice with food coloring and water but not okay to put booby traps under the floorboards_ , but they knew this one.

James Buchanan Barnes adored the ridiculous scrappy stubborn punk kid who’d stand up to bullies of all shapes and sizes and in the next breath turn around and draw a stray weedy dandelion like an angel might’ve. The Winter Soldier loved the man who’d seen him, who’d known him, who’d called his name and brought him out of the dark, who could spar twenty rounds with him and keep up effortlessly, who had never looked at him with fear at a ghost story but only sorrow at the haunting.

Bucky sat on the ground in Atlanta rubble, broken femur knitting itself back together, ribs twinging—not just bruised, then, probably snapped—and fingertips tingling; whole body tingling as if falling asleep, pins and needles. He said, “Don’t touch me, Steve—no, Stevie, seriously, don’t, I don’t know if this shit is contagious, if I’m turning into a sparkly blue rock I’m not going to watch you do it too—” and watched Steve shake his head ferociously.

“I can pick you up, I can get you out of here—” Three more mad cultists appeared. One of them yelled something indistinct about monsters from other dimensions, human flesh, a bargain or a trade. One of them tried to attack Captain America with a ritual blade. Steve elbowed him in the stomach and sent him flying across the square. “Bucky, you can’t just give up— _I_ can’t—”

Those big hands hovered over him, ready to grab. Ready to take any risk, throw themselves between Bucky Barnes and any danger.

Guilt, Bucky thought. Guilt and leadership and loyalty. That was Steve all over: built of strength he’d give to everybody else, none kept on his own behalf.

Steve Rogers deserved better than him. James Barnes had known that all along; the Winter Soldier didn’t have the vocabulary for that, but knew enough to not ask for more than was freely given, more than Steve himself offered. Lucky enough to have that much.

Bucky could do what Steve couldn’t, sometimes. Not because he was a better man. Hell, the exact opposite. But what Steve couldn’t or wouldn’t do was protect Steve Rogers.

Bucky could and would protect Steve. From snipers on cold battlefields he’d never wanted to go back to, or flying maniac cultists in the present day, or twisted Hydra plots and plans, or the pain of knowing someone loved him when Steve couldn’t love that person back. Or bizarre twinkly blue orbs with unknown side-effects.

Anyway it’d just eat Steve up inside, knowing he couldn’t give someone so unworthy his love, knowing Bucky loved him. No point to telling him. No need to wound that big Captain America heart.

Steve’d probably even try for a while, would convince himself he could be happy with Bucky, would pretend not to want someone more in tune with his idiotic boundless courage and compassion and selflessness and unfairly gorgeous square jawline. Someone like pretty shining Peggy, or Sam Wilson, at whom Steve smiled, with whom Steve talked sometimes late at night when he thought Bucky was sleeping without dreams.

So. No words, not for this wanting. No point. Nothing but pain.

Bucky used the metal arm. Shoved Steve away hard. “Move, Rogers. The world needs you.” Something felt odd. He couldn’t see right. Blue stealing over his vision. Sparkles creeping in.

Wanda was running their way in a swirl of scarlet telekinetic ribbons, Sam Wilson was landing hard and heading right for Steve, the comms popped back up with a crackle of static and a flurry of apologies from Coulson’s team, and Bucky said, “Stevie, don’t worry about it, okay, I’m gonna go out knowing I saved your dumb ass one more time, you’re gonna have to think about that _forever_ —”

“ _No_ —” Steve stumbled up from the rubble-heap where Bucky’d shoved him, ran forward, flung out hands. “No, Buck, I’m not going to lose you again, I’m not—why the hell did you _do_ that, you—you _jerk_ —” Battle-dust painted his cheek, bisected an eyebrow like a misplaced tear-streak. Red and white and blue and scuff-marks, Steve Rogers versus the world. Bucky wanted to laugh, or to cry; Bucky loved him.

Steve dove in to grab him, though what the hell that’d accomplish Bucky didn’t know, but then it didn’t matter anyway because the world glittered and faded out like firecrackers, blue, blue, so much blue, and Steve never got to touch him, though that voice rang in his ears, pleading, shouting his name.

 

 

Fighting was not happening. More accurately, the fight scene of the day was not happening, because of complicated negotiations involving a local Atlanta landmark building that someone’d thought was okay to film, and then it wasn’t, and then the lighting wasn’t right, and something odd kept happening with the weather. The air hung heavy and dense as molten glass, hot and poised and suffocating. Clouds should’ve been present but weren’t. A few of the crew, the ones from California, muttered dire warnings about earthquakes. “In _Atlanta_?” said a Russo brother incredulously, and they went off into a worried huddle regarding possible apocalyptic events and their potential effects on film schedules.

Sebastian, in the face of this rescheduling flurry, found himself instructed to change out of Winter Soldier costume armor, to drink a lot of water because he was looking dehydrated, and to go back to the hotel until tomorrow.

He sighed. Changed. Dutifully took the bottle the personal assistant brought over. Stared at it.

If they weren’t filming he wouldn’t see Chris Evans. If he didn’t see Chris Evans—

He did not know what to do. How to feel. What to say.

Everything hurt around Chris, and that wasn’t just his hangover. Everything hurt in a way that felt bewildering, billowing, bright and certain and clearer somehow, like sunshine that broke his heart in two. He’d thought, over time, he’d get used to the breaking.

So wrong. Every day kept on kicking open that cracked old sunbeam. Every time Chris smiled at him he bled more light, invisibly, inside his chest. Since that first day, that first table read, that first clumsy shy handshake that’d become a hug because Chris Evans hugged friends even when they were friends he’d met two seconds before.

Chris Evans was a walking hug, Sebastian’s aching heart concluded. Big and warm and vibrant. And his own body kept on turning that way, helplessly seeking the warmth.

Chris Evans probably wanted someone who could come up with better metaphors. Could a person be a hug?

And he’d just compared his own love to plants and phototropism. He sighed again. The water bottle shrugged at him, not without sympathy.

Bits and pieces of the night before nudged his brain as he got into the car. He’d been trying not to recall. Not to think about the hotel bar, terrifyingly strong blueberry-infused spirits, and—

No.

The car took him back to the hotel. The driver, perhaps sensing his mood, stayed quiet, though she did smile at him gently as he hopped out. He smiled back, because he wanted her to be happy too.

He got into the elevator. He got out of the elevator. He stared at the walls and the carpet and the hallway. His head reminded him that he shouldn’t hope for anything ever; he hoped that Chris was happy, enjoying an unplanned afternoon off, playing with puppies in sunshine or reading a book of philosophy or going to an art museum and smiling at an abstract splash of color.

Anthony Mackie, one shoulder propped on the wall next to his door, said, “So, how hung over are you, exactly, and how much do you remember?”

“I remember you drinking tequila and trying to explain why birds are objectively superior to cats as pets. I’ve got video.” He fished around for his room key. Not in the pocket where he’d thought. Hmm.

“They are, and that’s not why I’m asking. Have you seen Chris today?”

Sebastian froze. Hand in pocket. Getting stuck on a thread.

Anthony laughed. “You probably should.”

“If you’re saying that I absolutely should not. Why are you saying that?”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

Some, but he’d been hoping to write it off as a vodka-fueled bad dream. “Tell me how bad it was.”

“Nah, it was, like, precious romantic comedy levels of drunk. And he didn’t seem to mind.”

“What did I say?”

“More like what you did. And said, I guess. I mean, first you sat on his lap.”

“No.” He did remember that, actually. The denial was more of a protest against reality.

“Yep. We ran out of space after Don showed up, and you said, oh, that’s fine, he can have my chair, I’ll sit on Chris, and then you did.”

“Oh fuck me,” Sebastian said, in Romanian and then again in English, just for emphasis.

“As far as I know that didn’t happen, not that he minded when you sat on him. I saw his face. Hey, you know how we all used to think you were shy and sweet? What happened?”

“I got to know you all and decided I could trust you with the version of me that likes blueberry vodka and once spent a night getting fucked by three actual astronauts. Oh, god, I didn’t tell Chris that story, did I?”

“Nope. Though I want to see his reaction when you do. He loves space almost as much as you do. Not sure which way he’d be jealous.”

“Oh god,” Sebastian said again, slumping against the wall next to Anthony. “That’s not even funny. Chris is…Chris isn’t…” Isn’t what, he thought. Chris was everything. “He doesn’t think of me like that. He’s a friend. He used to try to answer questions for me in press conferences. To help me out.”

“He looked like he wanted to help you out, you know what I’m saying?”

“I hate you so much,” Sebastian said. The hallway listened avidly. He should find his room key. He should stop talking to Anthony. He should hide forever. “He doesn’t…no. He’s not. We’re not. It’s not. Whatever the fuck you just meant.”

“It could be. You were pretty clear about it.”

“I was…what?”

“Well, you were sitting on his lap, and you asked him if he knew how many guys you’d hooked up with on camera, and then _off_ camera…”

“Oh no,” Sebastian said. “No. Tell me I stopped there. No.”

“And—and this is kind of adorable—he did that stupid attractive embarrassed pink-cheeked thing and sort of laughed…”

Sebastian put an arm over his eyes, leaning against the wall. The wall did nothing to help, so he slid down it and sprawled theatrically on his face on the floor. Chris Evans had laughed. Had been embarrassed for him. “I’m a horrible person.”

“Totally. Completely unlovable. We all hate you.” Anthony sat down beside him, poked him in the shoulder. “Don’t think I mean that, kid.”

Anthony knew—most of them knew, he’d been open about it—about his struggle to like himself. Better these days. A therapist, friends, the growing awareness that maybe he did have something to offer: to fans, to stories, to the world around him. He knew he was better; he knew he was also off-balance and, deep down, occasionally convinced that words like those were true.

Anthony poked him again. “Seriously, don’t even. Or I’ll have to buy you another stupidly expensive book, who the fuck still buys hardcovers, anyway my point is I will totally make a grand gesture and embarrass the hell out of you _just_ to show you how much I love you. And also you should know something else extremely interesting, which is how he didn’t try to kick you off his lap or anything. He kinda smiled at you. Like he thought it was cute how drunk you thought that was a good line. Which has to mean, I don’t know, you tell me what it means, you have literally twelve times more experience with dudes than I have.”

Sebastian contemplated possible penalties for maiming one’s co-star, if one’s co-star kept recounting one’s sexual expertise in any further detail. How much would the fine be for a leg? A toe? “Forty,” he said aloud. Forty dollars. Cash. In his wallet.

“You offering to pay me to stop talking? I’m not at the good part yet.”

“No.” He sat up, pulling knees to his chest. Sighed. Tipped his head back against the wall. Thud. Sounded about right. “You might as well tell me the rest.”

“After all the adorable blushing, you said, and I quote, want to make it one more?”

“Oh god,” Sebastian said, and very slowly bit his closest kneecap. Maybe he could choke on his own leg.

Anthony smirked. “He still didn’t say no. Just got all concerned and protective, especially after you tried to lean in and almost fell off his lap, and then he picked you up and carried you off to bed. Impressive. Like watching Cap in real life, if Cap hung out in hotel bars and rescued drunk-ass morons.”

Sebastian whimpered. Not much. But a little. He’d admit it: definitely a whimper.

“Guess what else,” Anthony said.

“No.”

“He just got out of the elevator.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t want to see me. _I_ don’t want to see me.”

“He’s here.”

“No he isn’t.”

“Hi,” Chris Evans said.

Sebastian jerked upwards from his face-in-knees snail-shell, banged his head against the wall, yelped, and fell over.

Because he was sitting down, the floor caught him handily. So did Chris Evans, who got right down there and slid an arm around his back, easy as anything. “Hey. Sorry, I thought you heard me, didn’t mean to scare you. How’re you feeling?”

Sebastian opened his mouth. No words magically presented themselves as the exact right reply, which meant he ended up sitting there open-mouthed and speechless for what felt like his entire life. Chris’s arm shaped heroic compassion around him; Chris’s eyes were right there, blue as summer skies and concerned for his well-being. Sebastian couldn’t think.

He managed, “I’m,” which wasn’t an answer.

“Oh, you two’re perfect for each other,” Anthony said, “I need popcorn,” and got comfortable, watching.

Chris was blushing again. “That’s not fucking helpful. Seb—about last night—”

“Last night when I drank all the vodka in the fucking universe and I remember absolutely nothing and nothing happened at all ever,” Sebastian said, tripping over words and breath and his own heartbeat, which had sped up at Chris’s touch, which never wanted to slow down.

“Oh.” Chris bit a lip, sat back, shifted away. “You—guess I should’ve known, you wouldn’t—you’ve never seriously looked at me like—and you had to be that drunk to even flirt with—never mind. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. And—and maybe run lines or something, since we’ve got the afternoon, but—no, you’re busy, you’ve probably got plans with Mackie, I’ll just—”

“He has zero plans,” Anthony said. “None. At all. I’m already leaving. Have fun.”

“No, it’s fine, I’ll—” Chris was getting up, taking a step. He was not quite looking at Sebastian. “Maybe I’ll meet you guys for dinner later, or something?”

“Wait—” Sebastian scrambled to his feet. Nearly fell over again. No clue what he was saying. But Chris’s shoulders seemed sad and that had to be fixed. That had to be fixed by any means he could find, any words he could offer, any pieces of himself he could give, always and always. “Chris, I—I mean, I—”

Chris stopped. Head coming back up. “Seb—”

“If you want we could—” Dizziness. Abrupt and blinding. Hallway dissolving into dull washed-out streaks and swirls. His head didn’t hurt exactly but became clouds, white and blurry.

He put a hand up—he thought he did—to touch his temple. His legs gave way. His hand fell back down, limp.

Someone shouted his name. Someone—Chris, that felt like Chris, Chris’s arms and Chris’s strength and Chris’s care—took his weight. Cradled him. Said his name again, frantic. “Seb—what happened, what’s wrong, what—”

He couldn’t talk. He tried but couldn’t form words. His eyelids were heavy. He was heavy, but paradoxically sparkly and oddly effervescent, tingling all over, as if turning not to stone but to sapphires.

“Sebastian—!” Chris’s voice sounded wrong. Frightened. Cracking. “Seb, no—no, stay with me, stay awake, look at me, please—fucking _stay with me_ —Anthony, where are the fucking doctors, someone should be—”

“They’re on the way, they said—” Anthony must be on the phone, must have called someone; he was answering questions. “Yeah, what was that, no, he was fine a second ago, we were talking, he just collapsed—”

“Seb,” Chris pleaded. “Seb, no—oh, god, no—no, you’re fine, you’re gonna be fine, just—just don’t fucking leave me, hang on, you have to hang on—Anthony, fuck, I don’t think he’s breathing, I can’t feel—”

Sebastian wasn’t sure he was breathing either. Awfully difficult all of a sudden. Like being pushed through water, blue and thick and relentless, pressing down atop him.

Something hot and wet hit his face. More water. A drop. Chris was crying. That wasn’t right. Chris shouldn’t be crying. He had to wake up. He had to help Chris.

He couldn’t seem to do anything. He could barely feel Chris’s touch anymore.

I can’t be dying, he wanted to shout, I’m not, I can’t be, I have to make sure Chris is okay, I need to wake up now!

He couldn’t. He was scared and he couldn’t wake up and he wanted to touch Chris’s cheek, to whisper that everything’d be okay, to say the words he hadn’t had the courage for: yes I meant everything I said in the bar, I want you, I don’t want to have never told you, you sounded like you might maybe be interested too and I don’t know how I could’ve been so lucky but if you would then I would, I love you, I love seeing you smile—

Darkness, a kind of silent final velvet smothering, descended. It held a tint of that strange sparkling blue. Sebastian wouldn’t’ve guessed that. Made sense, though. Blue should be the last color he saw; it meant Chris’s eyes, after all, like oceans, like gemstones, like love.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky and Sebastian wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually the first half of the next chapter for ages, but I thought that one was getting really long, so this seemed like a good place to cut it in two!

He wasn’t dead. That was potentially a positive element of the situation. Depending on the situation. The Winter Soldier lay still. Assessed. Considered sensory input. Not a street, not a rooftop, no mad cultists. Not an infirmary, either. Felt like a standard nondescript floor. Could be anyplace.

Bucky Barnes could hear terrified voices, could feel a terrified grip on his body. Someone caring for him. Someone with large kind hands, and no combat training, and either no fear at all about potential triggers and brainwashing or else another overwhelming emotion that trampled the fear.

Sounded like Steve. Steve cared.

He did not entirely push the Soldier’s instincts away, because they were useful. He did not want the person—Steve?—to be scared, either; he knew how that felt, and Bucky Barnes did not want anyone else to be scared again, if he could prevent it.

At least he could breathe. Heavy drugging sapphire weights lifted. Lungs responding. Systems functional, if wrung out like he’d gone ten rounds with an angry Hulk.

“Seb!” Hands were running over him, arms cradling him; he tensed, but his hearing was back, no longer underwater, and he knew that voice. Saying the wrong name, and cracking with fear, but he knew it. “Sebastian? Oh god—Seb—no, no, you can’t be, you aren’t—help, someone help us, _please_ —”

Bucky opened his eyes and said, “Steve?” because Steve sounded heartbroken, horrified, confused, and that couldn’t be right. “Steve, you okay?”

“ _Steve_ —” Crying splintered off, astonished. Steve stared at him. “Seb, I—do you know who I am? This isn’t funny…”

Carpet under him. More accurately, a body under him as they sat on the carpet: anxious arms holding him up. Steve’s arms.

Steve didn’t look right. Not because of the fear, either. Bucky shoved himself upright, heart hammering in his throat. Blank amazed hotel walls watched them, silently memorizing the tale for themselves.

Steve _didn’t_ look right. Not quite as…not as heavy, in more ways than one. Not as battle-honed, not that Steve Rogers’d ever gotten much basic training, but Steve _did_ know how to move and fight for his life, and _this_ person, while nicely built and likely capable of decent self-defense, carried shoulders and weight more like a gymnast or a dancer.

He had Steve’s eyes. Steve’s tiny scattered freckles over Irish-fair skin. Steve’s hands, big and determined and flung into action to hold up the world. Bucky stared.

“Sebastian,” the Not-Steve pleaded. “It’s me, it’s Chris—you know me, please, please, you have to know me, oh god—okay, um, okay, it’s all right, it’ll be all right, it’s okay if you don’t know me, I want to help, I promise—”

The Falcon—no, if this wasn’t Steve, this was equally not Sam Wilson—knelt beside them. Asked, “Sebastian? Come on, you know who I am, right, we were just talking about you and the really awesome decisions you make, you remember that?” His voice aimed for casual, forcibly light; the layers beneath were tight and scared, genuinely frightened. “This’s totally a joke, it’s you gettin’ back at me for teasing you about Evans, got it, but it’s seriously not that funny, man.”

Several other people came sprinting out of doorways down the hall. Not threats, the Winter Soldier identified. Apprehensive. Concerned. One of them looked like Tony Stark, one like Natasha, and two of them he did not recognize. “—paramedics are heading up,” one of the latter was saying, “is he awake, or—”

“He doesn’t know me,” the man who’d said his name was Chris whispered. “He doesn’t—can that happen? Like a stroke, or—he was fine, he was talking to me—did I say something, some trigger—”

“You?” said the Not-Natasha. “You’d never hurt anyone—Sebastian, sweetheart, do you know where you are?”

Stay quiet, the Winter Soldier advised. Learn the terrain. Might be a Hydra trick—disorientation, mind control, constructed environments—

As soon as he realized _that_ he grabbed Steve’s sleeve. “I can get us out of here. I know how they think. Hydra. I know you don’t know who I am but you trust me, right?”

Steve’s face crumpled. Crying. Wrong. “Seb—you think you’re Bucky? Is that it?” And to the Not-Natasha, “He gets—he’s said—depression, panic attacks—you _don’t_ think I did this—”

“I’m okay,” Bucky said. “I swear, Steve.” Aching everyplace, even his hair felt pounded flat and stretched on a torture rack, but no impaired functionality, so he set those irritations aside.

“Oh god,” Not-Steve—Chris?—begged, eyes wet, face wet. “Sebastian—Seb, it’s going to be okay, I’ll make it okay, I’ll take care of you, I’m here. I’m—I—oh fuck I can’t—” His whole body shook with emotion. Holding down sobs, holding in the breakdown. Steve Rogers would do that.

Two people in medical clothing appeared. They ran down the hall, equipment in tow. Bucky sat up more, under Chris’s arm. Then jumped to his feet. Doctors. Hydra doctors, maybe. Or somebody else. Could be anybody. Long list.

Huge question marks floated in the air. Couldn’t be answered from a hospital bed, under sedation.

He registered the yelps and scuffles at his own motion. These people weren’t used to his movements. The shiver and whirr of vibranium. The step of an assassin. They might be faking surprise, but both Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier had learned to read physical cues, for sergeant’s battlefield leadership and for infiltration and interrogation.

He didn’t think they were faking. He didn’t think Chris, gazing at him with wide shocked eyes, chest going up and down as if Bucky’d punched the air from his lungs, was faking.

He looked at his hand. The human hand. The hand that’d turned blue and glowing after he’d stopped the stupid fucking orb from hitting Steve in the back. Looked normal now, insofar as he knew what normal hands looked like, which he thought he did.

Okay. He could deal with this. He’d seen weirder things. Hell, he himself probably counted as a weirder thing, brainwashed cryogenically frozen former legendary assassin and all.

He hated all metaphysical cultists and their Swirly Blue Orbs of Interdimensional Evil, he decided.

“So,” he tried. “Anyone know where I can find goddamn interdimensional cultists around here?”

Chris stared at him. Chris was beautiful, Bucky thought, in the way that a softer puppy-pawed version of Steve would be, a Steve without the hero-mantle draped over his shoulders, but with the courage that would make him promise to care for a friend, without hesitation.

Or—someone more than a friend. The Winter Soldier knew emotion and all its tactical uses; Bucky Barnes knew love. Chris, whoever Chris was, loved the person he’d lost, the person who’d been here in Bucky’s place. Sebastian.

And Bucky Barnes did know something about _that_ particular bullet to the heart. That kind of love.

“No?” he said, “okay, sorry, I’m just going to try to—figure this out, whatever the fuck this even is, I’m really sorry, I’ll see what I can do about getting your—Sebastian—back, I’m not exactly Captain America, I’m sorry—” and then he ran.

 

Sebastian hurt everyplace. Pushed through some sort of meat grinder. A cosmic blender. An extravagantly painful juicer. Other culinary metaphors. If he kept thinking about kitchen gadgets he wouldn’t have to think about whatever the fuck’d just happened. That was logical. Not insane at all.

“So what happened?” That’d be Chris. No. Steve. Steve Rogers.

Because these were the Avengers. Because this was insane, and he’d clearly had some sort of mental breakdown, because if not—

The medical equipment, the soft whirrs and chirps, felt entirely sane. So did the voices. Familiar, those voices, but subtly different. Sebastian knew Chris’s voice, knew it better than just about any other voice, the cadences and the laughter, and that wasn’t Chris.

But if that wasn’t Chris—

Sebastian’d always enjoyed philosophy and loved space and science fiction. He knew about alternate dimensions and possibilities.

Even more so, he knew this truth: that was and wasn’t Chris’s voice. His heart was sure.

Which meant he was sure. This was all real.

He resisted the urge to curl up in a ball and whimper at this realization. For one thing, the Avengers’d likely take it as an admission of guilt. For another, he really really didn’t want to move yet. His head throbbed. His whole body throbbed.

“We don’t know—”

“—yet, is what the Jolly Green Giant means by that. We don’t know _yet_. Which are not words that I like to say. He’s definitely human, though.”

“ _Bucky’s_ human,” Steve snapped. Large muscular presence hovering at Sebastian’s bedside. Might be protective. Might be angry.

“The cosmic radiation, the vibrations, the whole frequency at which he, he sort of…exists—”

“ _Short_ version.”

“This guy’s got a scar on his right forearm, had a broken toe that never got set exactly right, suffered a minor respiratory illness in the last two weeks—” True. Sebastian’d been coughing and exhausted and desperately wanting Chris to hold him, sick and alone and miserable. Chris had brought him instant chicken noodle soup and smiled at him like a friend.

“—and, y’know, there’s the whole not-metal-arm thing.” A tap at his very much flesh-and-blood shoulder. “Any of that sound like your boyfriend to you, Captivator?”

“Bucky’s not my—never mind. So who the hell is he?” Captain America: moving from puzzle-piece assembly to strategic commander. “If he knows anything about Bucky, he’s gonna talk.” Correction, Sebastian thought. Strategic and _pissed-off_ commander. Jagged wistful wanting in the disclaimer about boyfriends. Fueling the anger.

He risked a glimpse from under eyelashes. The one who looked uncannily like Mark Ruffalo, certainly Doctor Banner, shrugged and said, “Oh, hey, check this out, that’s neat—” to Tony Stark, and pointed at one of the readings. Sebastian did not want to be considered neat. Sebastian wanted to go home, possibly with Captain America’s autograph, but that was unlikely under current suspicious circumstances.

Mostly he wanted his head to stop splitting itself in two. The pillow was trying its best, but couldn’t do much about the inside of his skull.

Steve Rogers said, “If he’s a decoy he’s a bad one, they must’ve known we’d see through—was that the point? To distract us? Me?”

“Best way to find out? Let’s wake him up and ask him.”

Superhero attention landed on Sebastian like a ton of unpleasant highly focused bricks. He hastily cracked one eye open. Then the other. “I’m awake.”

“Hi,” Steve Rogers said. This was a friendly hello, but friendly in the way that meant _I have limited patience before I start throwing punches at the world, and also you took the place of my Bucky_. “What’s your name?”

“Sebastian.” No point in lying; not that he’d try to. Those were seriously three Avengers. Seriously staring at him. “Um. Sebastian Stan?”

A tiny part of his brain squeaked with hero-worship. Captain America. Iron Man. Doctor Banner. In the larger-than-life flesh.

“So, Sebastian.” Tony Stark was doing something complicated with a glowing holographic field. “What we know is that Cap’s not-so-platonic life partner—”

“Tony, can you not, for one second—”

“—someday you two’ll figure it out, stop looking at me like that—anyway, he got hit with some sort of miniaturized interdimensional hopscotch device, and now we have you and not him and not the device, either, which is frankly inconsiderate. Want a blueberry? Cool. Got any theories? What would the crazed monster-worshipping cultists want with, no offense, entirely human you?”

Sebastian gulped, ate the blueberry—Tony grinned at him—and squared shoulders. Faced the question and the situation head-on. Like a hero. Steve Rogers was avoiding looking directly at him. “I’m. Um. I sort of. Play Bucky Barnes. That’s all I can think of. I’m sort of Bucky? Not really. But. In the movies?”

“In the what,” Doctor Banner said, beating Tony by about a millisecond.

“Well…you know…there are a lot of movies? The—I guess in our world you’re all fictional, I don’t know, maybe some sort of dimensional leakage—”

“I like him,” Tony declared. “Also, movies? Am I the star? I’d better be the star, is all I’m saying. Totally photogenic.”

A muscle twitched in Steve’s jaw.

“Dimensional leakage is as good a theory as any,” Doctor Banner offered, nodding encouragingly. “So we’re fictional, and you play us—well, James Barnes, specifically—in the films. Do you recall what happened before you ended up here? Any visions, portals, anything you were doing, anything you can remember?”

“We were filming—no, never mind, we weren’t. We were done for the day. The weather was…wrong. Not working right. Sort of sticky. In, um, Atlanta? And I had a headache…” Even the memory of it kicked steel boots into his temples. “One minute I was fine—kind of hungover, kind of tired, but fine—and then I couldn’t even move. Or breathe. Like being smothered in sapphires.”

“Ah,” Doctor Banner said.

“I’ve decided I don’t like Atlanta.” Tony was performing some sort of search, running numbers, checking a display. “It’s too hot and apparently there’re inconsiderate interdimensional portals. We were there too, Adorable Tall Dark And Not Deadly, checking into this group that wanted to raise a giant undead squid-god. So, okay, Barnes gets hit by the glowy rock, turns blue, and when he’s not blue anymore he’s also not here anymore and we’ve got you. Sounds to me like he’s wherever you were, and you’re here.”

Steve Rogers looked at Sebastian. Hastily looked away, over at Tony’s displays. “So he’s alive.” His voice sounded exactly the way Captain America would sound, saying those words: a leader, a hero, a man given reprieve from the heart-wound that was for him the loss of Bucky Barnes. “He—it was meant for me. To get me out of the way. That glowing…whatever it was. Bucky took that hit. For me.”

“He’s alive,” Doctor Banner said. “Steve—we’ll get him back.”

Tony Stark patted Steve’s shoulder, and said, “Of course we will. Blueberry?”

Sebastian, rather to his own surprise, said, “I’m okay. I mean, everything hurts and I thought I was going to die, but I’m okay. So he is too.”

Steve Rogers faced him fully, maybe for the first time. Almost smiled, a reluctant boyish crooked concession to comfort. “Thanks.”

“I’ve been running some scans,” Doctor Banner said, “on your dimensional signature, and, you know, this’s interesting…Tony, come look at this…”

“Oh, that’s not stable, is it? You’re right, that is interesting. Maybe even fascinating. If that’s decaying like _that_ , then _this_ would mean…” They went off into a scientific reverie.

Steve Rogers said, abruptly, “Not stable?”

Sebastian had been trying to process the words too, and glanced up at Steve. Who, apparently unconsciously, put a hand on his shoulder. “What did you mean, decaying? Is he going to be all right?”

Oh. Wow. Superhero loyalty. Muscles poised to defend him. Having decided Sebastian deserved defending.

Maybe it was because he looked like Bucky Barnes. Maybe it was Steve being a good guy, hating bullies even when they took the form of interdimensional interference. Maybe it was just to annoy Tony.

Either way Sebastian couldn’t help being a little turned on. That hand. On his shoulder. Chris and not Chris. Passionate strength and ferocious commitment. Confusing as hell, especially when even his hair had carried on hurting, but other parts of him hadn’t got the message and tingled briefly.

“For now, let’s go with yes.” Tony emerged from science. “Not necessarily long-term, though. But that won’t be a problem as long as we can send Mr Adorable back before, oh, let’s say a week at most.”

“What he means,” Doctor Banner said, “is that you’re—well, you’re perceptibly, scientifically speaking, different from us, let’s say. Resonating at different, er, frequencies. Vibrations. So this is putting a tremendous strain on both you and the universe, and the easiest fix for the universe would be if you, er…”

“Vibrate apart,” Sebastian said. The words did not feel real. A death sentence? No. Couldn’t be.

“That won’t happen.” Steve’s certainty filled up the lab. The universe. A counterargument built of one man. “We’ll solve it.”

“Like we said, it’s not immediate.” Tony waved the bag of blueberries. “And we are a bunch of geniuses, so. We’d like to run a few more scans, get Shuri and the Wakandan team in on this, but while we’re doing that I can get JARVIS to set up a room for you—oh, right, you don’t know where we are, do you? This is the _other_ Avengers Tower. Malibu, not New York or DC. The _secret_ one. Since Cap’s cranky about public appearances these days.”

“It’s complicated,” Steve said.

“Anyway we’ll get you someplace more comfortable to hang out, no reason you should live in the lab, we’ve got Netflix—huh, movies, that could be fun—and a gym and whatever you interdimensional visitors like to do with your time. Give us a couple hours with you first.”

“Okay.” As if he could say anything else. He watched the Avengers. He looked up at Steve.

He caught Steve glancing down at him, under the cool neutral gleam of laboratory lights. Steve’s eyes were unguarded for an instant: younger and more vulnerable and more stubborn, a man gazing at someone who resembled but wasn’t the person he wanted, someone who might have only a week to live.

Steve’s expression promised that wouldn’t be the case. Steve Rogers would throw himself into the path of time itself, first.

Sebastian leaned into the hand on his shoulder, hopefully unnoticeably. He’d always liked being touched; he needed friends, lovers, anchors. Too easy to get lonely, otherwise. Isolated in his own skin. One reason he loved Chris Evans—one reason among many—involved that free-flowing affection: arms around shoulders, joyous outflung hands amid laughter, reaching down to help pull Sebastian himself up onto a stage and out of a crowd.

Chris had tried to hold him. Chris had thought he’d been dying. He couldn’t even imagine what Chris might think now. How Chris’s giant golden heart might’ve coped with the appearance of someone who looks like Sebastian and isn’t. While Sebastian landed here in this fantastical super-hero world, being told that, yes, maybe he _was_ in fact dying.

He wanted to see Chris again. He wanted to try to finish those words he’d never gotten out. He did not know what Chris would say—he thought that it was likely Chris would laugh and hug him and tell him that, no, they were good the way they were, Chris had never wanted anything more, but no worries, Seb, we’re still friends—but he wanted to have tried.

He was also cold. He wanted a blanket. Steve Rogers’ hand felt warm.

To push away the cold, he said to Steve, “He’ll be okay. Your Bucky. He can handle himself. He’s probably figured everything out on his end already.”

“He can,” Steve said. “He can do anything. Bucky’s—he’s done so much. But if your world doesn’t have—the labs, the science, the capabilities—if he doesn’t even know that he might be—he shouldn’t have to face this. He doesn’t deserve—it should be me. It should’ve been me.”

“He thinks that way,” Sebastian said, “about you. Or at least. You know. I mean—when I’m trying to play him. The character. That’s what I think. I don’t know if that helps. But he’ll never stop trying to get back to you.”

Steve did the near-smile again, practiced but wobbly; squeezed Sebastian’s shoulder hard, said, “I’ll be in the gym for a couple hours,” and left. Fast.

“Don’t take it personally,” Tony Stark suggested, coming over with a distressingly large needle. “He and Barnes are—well. They’ve got history. They _are_ history.” Some other emotion flickered behind his eyes; Tony was complicated too, Sebastian thought, watching. But heroic, yes. “I need your blood, Adorable Not-Barnes. Also how do you feel about ocean views? Your room has one.”

Sebastian took a deep breath. Held out his arm. Said yes to the ocean views, and let science happen to him.

He watched the door, where Steve had vanished. He thought that he did know a few truths, in this astonishing impossible upside-down situation.

He knew that this was real, at least enough to act upon. He knew that he did not want to die. He knew that he wanted to get home to Chris.

He also knew that Steve Rogers was in love with Bucky Barnes.

He knew that the same way he knew his own heart, and the way it spun and leapt and tap-danced when he thought about Chris: the way Chris felt like coming home. He recognized that in Steve’s face, saying Bucky’s name.

He almost laughed. He had, of course, been playing Bucky Barnes that way all along. In love.

He knew Bucky—obviously he didn’t, not the _real_ Bucky, but the character, and if this was some sort of interdimensional bleed the character should be pretty accurate—and he knew. Bucky Barnes loved Steve Rogers. Always had, always would. Any size, any version. That big lion’s heart. That kid from Brooklyn who’d stand up and take on the world. Bucky Barnes, even brainwashed and torn up inside, would follow Steve anywhere. Would stand at Steve’s side, would guard Steve’s back, and smile like a loyal friend, because Bucky, or at least Sebastian’s Bucky, had always seen Steve as the hero, of the two of them. His Stevie, shining too bright to deserve only a dark patched-up shadow in return.

And Steve Rogers loved Bucky Barnes.

He and Chris had joked about it, on set, during table reads, during rehearsals. The one person Cap’d drop everything for. The person who made Steve feel like that Brooklyn kid again. Helicopter-wrangling, gutwrenching, painful love.

It’d been a joke, then, because it’d never in a million years be approved for all audiences; it’d been teasing, for Chris. Seeing how far they could push certain scenes.

It’d been true for Sebastian himself. Acting those scenes, saying those words, letting Chris pretend to save him from stunt-pool water.

Even if it wasn’t true for Chris, it was true for Steve. Sebastian knew that, because he knew how that felt: that hopeless sweet anguish, those arrows of silver and gold.

He winced at Tony’s giant needle—he was human, so allowed to wince—and considered the door where Steve’d fled.

Sebastian did not like to see other people hurting. In any time, any dimension: he never had. He knew how lonely hurt could feel. He thought that maybe, here and now, he could do something good. For Bucky. For Steve.

If he only had a week, or if he didn’t, maybe that’d be enough. Something, anyway. Something, while he was here.

He lay back while Tony found a larger scanner and waved it over him. He wondered, despite everything, whether he could get a picture with the Black Widow. He’d always loved her character. And the Natasha of the film scripts had a dry sense of humor. She might be amused.

“Hey,” Doctor Banner said, touching his arm. “You mentioned being sore, so I whipped up a little something? Shouldn’t interfere. Just painkillers.”

“I think I love you,” Sebastian said. “Thanks.”

Doctor Banner laughed, blushed slightly, shifted weight. “Not a problem. Hey…so…the other me. Not me. Am I…how do people…obviously the, uh, Other Guy’s not real…”

“Computer graphics.” He propped himself up on an elbow. “No Hulks in our world. But—Doctor Banner—” Words. Clumsy. He could do better. “You’re a hero. You really are. I mean, not just Mark—the guy who plays you, he’s great, all social causes and activism and—but people love the Hulk. And you. The characters. Um. Kids dress up as you. You’re somebody they can—you deal with anger and hurt and people can relate to—um, yeah. You’re a good guy. I swear.”

Doctor Banner smiled a little more, shifted weight again, fiddled with scientific equipment. Nodded.

“Huh,” said Tony, from behind computer screens. “Maybe you do have superpowers. Empathy. Kidding, but kind of not. How’re you feeling?”

“Better?” He was. “That stuff’s amazing. Why do you keep saying adorable? I’m not.”

“I see what Cap sees in you,” Tony said. “It’s like…looking into a mirror, but not. Like Barnes if—okay, yeah, that’s a weird thought. You _are_ adorable, I’m secure enough to admit that other people can be adorable, and you are. Sit tight, we’ll be done in a few, and we can see about solving this puzzle. I like puzzles. More blueberries?”

Sebastian accepted blueberries. Trusted the Avengers with his blood and his future. Thought about empathy. He wasn’t a superhero. He was under no illusions. No ability to fight off killer robots or aliens or supernaturally-enhanced Nazis.

But there might be something he, Sebastian Stan, could do. For Steve Rogers, and Bucky Barnes. Who deserved to be happy.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chris and Bucky and Sebastian and Steve try to figure things out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! Life things, like, er...a family funeral...and then the start of the new semester...so many things... *sigh* But here you go! Thanks for still reading!

Bucky stared at the spot where the temple should’ve been. A parking lot stared back blandly. Stormy late-afternoon Atlanta heat coiled in the air and slid down his back. Black asphalt and white lines shrugged his direction.

Okay. A minor setback. Clearly this Atlanta did not possess the same amount of insane cultists, at least not publicly.

He glared at the closest Honda Civic just because. It took no notice.

He looked at his hand for a second. No sign of any blue glowy rock. The universe was not on his side.

The universe never had been. But he could handle that; him and Steve against everything, always. Like home.

Steve would probably know what to do. Or wouldn’t let not knowing stop him. Steve would make a strategic call based on the slim available evidence and charge forward. With passion.

No version of Bucky Barnes was Steve Rogers. They collectively thought about this for a minute, and then considered their own skill sets.

Blending in. Reconnaissance. Infiltration. Assassination. No, not that last one. Most likely not, anyway, though Bucky’s knives were going to have some _words_ with a head cultist as soon as possible. Steve needed him.

He glanced across the lot at the small but busy shopping mall.

Several moments later, he’d acquired a leather jacket and gloves from a store with a display conveniently located near an exit. The store’s staff hadn’t been looking; the alarm system hadn’t been a challenge. He felt a bit bad about not paying, but this was an emergency; he’d be instantly recognizable, not necessarily as himself but possibly as the now-vanished Sebastian.

Sebastian, he thought. And Chris. Who looked like Steve.

With the aid of one or two polite inquiries—shy, soft-spoken, playing up the harmless lost tourist persona—and a group of kind young women who looked up directions on a phone, he found the local library, and computers.

Several moments after that, he leaned back in his chair, no military precision, and ran his human hand through his hair. The librarian looked over, decided he did not need assistance, and offered a polite smile. Bucky nodded back because that was what people did, and rifled through mission data in his head.

An alternate universe. Not a surprise. An alternate universe in which superheroes and villains were fictional and famous actors named Sebastian Stan and Christopher Evans played movie versions of himself and Steve. A little weirder, but okay.

An alternate universe without magic or interdimensional technology. Might be a problem.

One of the sites he’d been checking covered local news. He’d wondered whether any metaphysical disturbances had been noted. None had. And someone must’ve decided to keep Sebastian Stan’s disappearance quiet; no news about that either, though Bucky imagined it should’ve been a story. Someone trying to protect a friend’s reputation, maybe.

Chris Evans, though, had made a social media post an hour ago. Twitter. Relatively cryptic. At least, if the reader didn’t believe in cross-dimensional location-hopping.

Bucky read the post again. _I believe you. Tell me how I can help. I’ll be here._

Fans and commenters had jumped on the tweet. Lots of speculation. Inquiries about the identity of the “you” in question. Replies. Asking what Chris meant, what Chris needed.

Bucky Barnes knew exactly what Chris meant.

He drummed metal fingertips on the table. Outside the sticky afternoon’d given way to a thundercloud evening, cloying and slow as syrup.

Chris Evans, celebrity actor, had Steve Rogers’ face and gaze, without the memories of battlefields and killer robots but with a deep sincerity that knew about other kinds of war. Internal, maybe: anxiety, mourning, loss.

Chris Evans believed him. And was the sort of person who’d reach out to help.

Chris Evans, according to the internet, _was_ Steve Rogers in many self-sacrificing passionate champion-of-justice ways. Bucky smiled at this, briefly. 

He did not have any better ideas. He could, the Winter Soldier thought, use an ally. Tactically speaking.

And Chris Evans needed his Sebastian back. The pain in that familiar-unfamiliar voice’d _hurt_. Bucky did not know whether Chris and Sebastian were lovers, in this universe, but he knew about love. The same spear twisted in his heart, an injury no healing factor could tackle.

He could try to make this easier for Chris, at least. For someone who wore Steve’s face and had Steve’s devotion.

He left the library noiselessly, in the oncoming night. He headed for Chris Evans’ hotel.

He was not entirely certain which room, but that did not matter; he knew which floor they’d been on earlier, and Chris was in fact standing by the window, curtains open, light folding around his shape like a cloak. Bucky knew that shape. Better than he knew his own.

He ducked casually through the hotel’s side entrance. He avoided luxurious decorative plant life. He also avoided a few people who looked like the ones he’d seen earlier and in internet articles: the film directors, the man who resembled Sam Wilson, the woman who resembled the Widow, some people he did not recognize wearing various suits and uniforms and serious expressions. He overheard bits of conversation: search plans, local authorities, hotel security, press and media management.

Hotel security would not be a problem. Search parties would not find Sebastian Stan.

Bucky Barnes was absolutely certain he knew where Sebastian Stan was. Since solving that would solve both their problems, and since Chris Evans clearly had an interest in doing exactly that, Chris Evans could damn well help.

He took the stairs up. In motion. Swift and powerful. He was a legend, a ghost, a myth, and he’d use any and all of the pieces of himself, the dangerous pieces or the jagged ones, the ones that cut like shards of glass as he tried to gather them, if that meant getting back to Steve—

And if none of that could help him—

No. He’d make it back. Not for himself, but for Steve, who shouldn’t take one more heart-spear, one more heaping of guilt, if Bucky could prevent it.

Steve _would_ feel guilty. Massive selfless martyr. Ridiculous punk.

He scowled at the door he’d ascertained to be his target’s. Outside the storm did not break but hung heavy and thick as an omen.

He thought about kicking the door open—at least one of the suggestions in his head contemplated it—but in the end only tapped lightly. Chris Evans, missing his Sebastian, did not need a broken hotel-room door.

And yanked the door in question open almost instantly, eyes wide and astounded and worried and grateful all at once. Bucky had seen Steve look that way, once or twice, on the way back from a first rescue, on a road where Bucky’d both apparently miraculously recovered and not ever recovered at all, after a nightmare of operating tables and experiments and captivity.

“Bucky,” Chris breathed, and the word settled into the night and somehow became more true. Chris Evans recognized him as Bucky Barnes. As himself, whoever that was. “Come in, come in, oh thank god, you saw my message—I didn’t fuckin’ know how else to—but you came.”

This obvious statement of fact did not require a response. Bucky paused, evaluating. The door shut behind him.

Chris wore jeans and a soft-looking red shirt and desperation like chains, making shoulders slump with brutal weight. Chris must have been standing or pacing for some time; none of the furniture held impressions of occupancy.

That furniture was also poorly arranged. In the way. Flimsy. Likely to break in a fight. The Winter Soldier fleetingly estimated the usefulness, in order, of the mini-bar and the small table and the script pages scattered over the bed.

He said, “You said you could help.”

“I said I’d try. I don’t know how any of this fuckin’ works, I don’t know what I’m doing, but tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” Chris’s hands opened, spread: begging for instructions. Hoping Bucky had answers. “I believe you. I don’t know how it’s possible, but I believe you. Does that matter?”

“It depends.” He moved to Chris’s window, gazed out at the city. Lights and dazzle and indigo skies. A film crew and a fantastical production. A story. “What’s the situation?”

“The—oh. Um, they’re keepin’ it quiet for now. It’s only been a couple hours, and…” Chris hesitated. “And most people who were there—the Russos, Mackie—that’s our directors and Anthony Mackie, who—”

“Who plays the Falcon. I looked you up.”

“Oh…guess you would’ve…”

“I’m not planning to assassinate you. Bucky Barnes, ancient science nerd, actually _likes_ research.”

Chris started to say something, stopped, shook his head. “You make jokes.”

“I’m a hundred years old and stuck in an alternate universe. What else would I do?” He put a hand on the window-glass; through gloves, the sensors of the arm, the hand, his fingertips, were active but dulled. He lifted the hand. “Do I have to shoot anyone?”

“Do you _what_ —”

“Still a joke.”

Chris actually crossed arms at him, though one corner of that mouth tipped up. “That’s not fuckin’ funny.” And in that instant, faced with that ghost of Steve Rogers, Bucky’s heart turned over. Metaphoric, but still. Arrow to the chest. Bleeding out.

This time he said, “What are they saying? The people who were there.”

Chris sighed. Sank down into the chair closest to the window, one of two. “Nothin’ much, yet. Nobody’s sure what to think. We know what we all saw, you’re not Seb, you don’t move like Seb, you don’t sound like him—I mean you do, of course you do, but…”

“I’m not him. I know.” One more person he was not. Shouldn’t be a surprise. “So they believe it? They understand what happened?”

“No one knows what happened.” Chris scrubbed a hand over his face. That face, that beard, that jawline, said Captain America. The accent, not Brooklyn but Boston, gave it away. Not Steve. Chris. Chris, whose voice took on the emphasis of anguish. “The unofficial-official story is that no one’s seen Seb for a couple hours and we know he wasn’t feeling great, so if anyone sees or hears from him, let us know. But it’s not being broadcast or anything. We didn’t want to scare Seb’s mom, for one. We told the doctors—you remember, they were there—”

Bucky nodded.

“—that there must be some explanation. Some prank or stunt. Which isn’t like Seb, and we all said that too, after the police left, after we gave them that story. And we saw what we saw. Which means Seb’s gone and we have you, and we don’t know how the fuck to explain _that_ one, so we were hoping that if anyone saw _you_ they’d call.”

“Well,” Bucky said. “I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Chris Evans said. “You came.”

In another universe, in a former life, Bucky Barnes would’ve made the off-color joke, given that phrasing. He nearly did. “Problem is, I don’t know any more than you do. Well, some, I guess. I know what we were up against, on my side. So I can tell you what it looked like on my end, and you can tell me yours.”

Chris nodded back, and they did.

Chris’s side of the story, not involving insane cultists or a magical battle, did not take long. But it snuck down Bucky’s spine and twined its way into his gut like briars of gold. Chris’s voice cracked when describing the scene; Chris squared broad shoulders and forged on with the story, the way a hero would.

“…and then he was—was gone.” Chris stared down. At both big hands, clenched. “He was gone. God. I’m so fucking useless—I couldn’t even—he’d asked me something, something important—well, maybe not, I don’t know, just dinner, but the way he asked—and I wanted to—but I didn’t have the words, and then he was…”

“Not there,” Bucky said. “And I was. There.”

“I thought he was dead,” Chris whispered. “He stopped breathing. In my arms. And then he—you—took a breath, and it was okay after all, I could breathe too, everything was gonna be okay, I was holding onto him—and then you weren’t him and he was still gone…fuck. Sorry.”

“We’ll figure this out,” Bucky said. “I’ll…I’ll find him. For you.”

“You will, won’t you?” Chris leaned forward. Elbows on knees. Eyes on Bucky’s face. So much attention, so fierce and committed. Believing that Bucky Barnes could be a hero. “You’re not gonna stop trying.”

“A mission,” Bucky said, and stopped. Too many layers. And what the fuck was wrong with him, talking to Chris Evans—not Steve, _not_ Steve—as if Chris wasn’t a stranger, as if—

Potentially Chris had superpowers after all. Confession-related. Emotional. He ran the odds in his head. Low, but not impossible, maybe. He did not know enough about this universe to confirm.

“Steve Rogers,” Chris said. “Your mission. Huh. Seb was right. I mean, I knew he was right, of course he was, he’s usually fucking right about character and emotion, and we even played it like that, as much as we could, but—he was right. He’d love that.” That Boston accent swooped and ran and hid like lonely gulls: melancholy, hurting, drowned in wistfulness that was not quite envy.

“The fuck,” Bucky said, all pieces of his head in complete agreement on this. “Right about what?” He should be gathering intel, making plans, finding weaponry; he needed to hear this answer. He did not move.

“About you,” Chris said. “You’re in love with Steve.”

Always had been. Always would be. From back alleyways to alien planets, and beyond.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, because the person he was, whoever he was, wherever he was, would not deny that truth any more than he would ever tell it to Steve; but Chris Evans was not Steve Rogers. “Always have been, always gonna be.”

Chris’s next breath sounded like it hurt. “Does he know?”

He only needed a heartbeat to know why Chris would ask. “No.”

“Why not?” It was an honest question, not a critique.

“Because…” Bucky sighed, gave up, took the other chair. Dangled a leg insouciantly over one armrest because he could, because no one told him how to sit in furniture anymore, because Bucky Barnes would’ve, all provocative and lounging, with Steve Rogers intently gazing at him and asking him questions.

Despite himself, he was a little intrigued, if not exactly turned on. Maybe some. Steve and not Steve, softer, less scarred but equally stubborn, equally generous. Bucky’s heart belonged to Steve, though, and Steve was in another universe and not here to join in or approve, so that was that. Anyway, he was damn tired. Interdimensional portals and near-death experiences and all.

“Because,” he said finally, “Steve carries too much already.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Thought so.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Steve loves you.” Chris’s eyelashes caught the room’s light, outlined in gold. “At least my version does. Seb says it’s important. Playing it like that. We joke about it, about bringing down helicopters and waking up when someone says your name, fairytale shit, but it is a love story. And if you’re here then it’s real. And Steve loves Bucky.”

“Fuck you,” Bucky said, sharp and defensive as one of his own knives. “He doesn’t. I’d know.”

“Would you? If you’re trying so hard not to tell him? ’Cause on this side, Steve’s trying like hell not to put any extra pressure on _you_.”

“No,” Bucky said. “No. Steve’s not—Steve’s too _good_ for what I—and what about you? You and your Sebastian. You said you didn’t have the fucking words. _You_ didn’t tell him.”

Chris went white behind the beard, behind the freckles. Shot absolutely gone home. Right to the center. But, like Steve Rogers, he took the pain and made it into strength. “You’re right. I should’ve. I love him. I love Sebastian Stan. And if—when—we get him back—I’ll say it.”

Bucky found himself silenced by this.

“I never thought he’d want me,” Chris said. “I never thought—he’s beautiful and brilliant and he’s been places and been through things that I can’t even—he loves Shakespeare and he reads books on the philosophy of pleasure. He takes creative writing courses. And then he’s not afraid to look ridiculous on camera. To post videos of himself singing or working out or what the fuck ever. He talks to people because he’s genuinely interested in them. He _cares_. And I’m a fucking meatball from Boston with anxiety issues who cries at Disney movies. I couldn’t.”

“But you can now.”

“I can’t not say it.” Chris glanced down, but then back up: meeting Bucky’s eyes again. “Seeing him, feeling him stop breathing, in my arms…and then again, just now, saying it to you. I heard what I just told you, about trying too hard not to say something. If it’s a no then it’s a no, but…”

“But you think he was asking you out to dinner. Before.”

“I hope,” Chris Evans said. “I hope. Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For listening. For makin’ me hear it.” Chris, legs crossed, swung a foot; his shoe nearly tapped Bucky’s boot. “Thanks.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. The Winter Soldier had not been thanked by anyone; Bucky Barnes had tended to dismiss the words. _That the last chocolate-chip cookie, Sarge? Oh, hey, no, you should, you didn’t have any of the last package—oh, well, thanks!_ , when his men had deserved it ten times more than he had, and he wished he’d had ten more to toss over across the fire. A sideways conflicted _thanks, Buck_ , when Steve’s pride hadn’t wanted to accept more than Bucky’s fair share of the rent, when money got tight and Steve’s drawing commissions dried up. He’d known Steve hadn’t wanted to have to say it. He hadn’t felt right accepting it. “Sure.”

This felt insufficient. And Chris Evans looked far too much like Steve. And the rain broke free at last and exploded onto the world, noisy, clamoring, rattling down the windowpane, falling to the ground below.

He glanced over at Chris, at that puddle of unhappiness, again.

He said, “Tell me more about him. Your Sebastian.”

“He’s not my Sebastian,” Chris said, but in a way that meant he’d like it if so. “Shouldn’t we be…I don’t know, calling astrophysicists for help or something?”

“Do you know any?”

“I could ask some on Twitter. I can make it sound hypothetical.” Chris grabbed his phone. Typed. Did not look up. “About Sebastian…”

“It might be helpful.” For Chris, anyway. Bucky Barnes did know about love, and the Winter Soldier was good at listening, and they all wanted Chris Evans to be happy.

Not only because he looked like Steve. Because Chris Evans, Bucky decided, watching that bent head, was a good man. And deserved whatever help one out-of-place inadequate Bucky Barnes could give.

He added, “Tell me what your astrophysicists say. But while we’re waiting tell me about Sebastian. Go ahead.”

Chris bit a lip. “Seb’s…he’s…”

“Look,” Bucky said, “if you’re gonna talk to him, you have to at least be able to talk _about_ him.” He thought he’d found the right tone. Not quite as sarcastic as he’d’ve used with his Steve, but just about there. Little bit of sass, the way the voice of Bucky Barnes advised in his head, and tempered with encouragement.

Chris Evans laughed, said, “Oh fuck you very much,” in the same way Steve would’ve, and then got softer and more contemplative and said, “Thanks.”

Bucky shrugged, and waited. The rain cried, tumbling and falling down, and was caught and comforted by the world. This world, anyway. A world.

“He can bench-press, like, somebody the size of me. He works out. He’s got, y’know, knife training and fight training…” Chris Evans looked away: out into the night. “But he’s not an Avenger. Not like—like you. He’s the sweetest guy I know. He won’t even kill a spider. He picks them up and says hi to them.”

Bucky tried to visualize himself doing this. He failed. The fate of spiders had not occurred to him since waking up. But he thought that perhaps the next time he met a spider, he might try it. He might try gently, like Sebastian Stan, carrying it outside. He nudged Chris’s foot with his, hopefully companionably. Felt like the thing to do. “Sounds kinda too good to be true.”

“He’s not a saint or anything, don’t get me wrong.” Chris’s smile was fond and sad and scared at once, like wounded stars. “Seb swears at himself in Romanian when he thinks he’s not getting a line delivered right, he adores his Instagram account, and I once saw him drink four giant iced coffees in, like, an hour. And if you tell him someone’ll be happy if he does something, he’ll half kill himself doing it for them, showing up when he’s exhausted or hungry or running a fever…”

“That one sounds familiar.” Bucky sighed. “You bought him one of those four iced coffees, didn’t you.”

“Yeah.” Chris laughed, though the sound echoed hollow as an empty room. “Should’ve guessed like three other people’d have the same idea. Everyone fucking loves Seb. Even if they barely know him. He smiles, and, like…the world lights up around him, y’know?”

“Yes.” He pulled a leg up, hugged it with both arms, chin on knee; metal whirred, and Chris Evans laughed again, startled. Bucky eyed him. “What?”

“Oh…Seb does that. Flexible. Weird poses. Like a cat. I should’ve said—I always want to kiss him. Anything he does, really.”

“We’ll get him back for you. What?”

“You know,” Chris Evans said, regarding him in rainlight, “I get the casting. I mean, I always did, but I totally do now.”

“Because we’re both flexible? Like cats? Which’re awesome, so thank you for that.”

“Nope.”

“Then what?”

“You really don’t see it, do you?”

“I have knives, Evans.”

“You’re not gonna hurt me. You—”

“The Winter Soldier’s the world’s scariest nightmare,” Bucky grumbled.

“You’ve heard me talk about Sebastian,” Chris said. “They cast him, all of that, everything I just said, to play _you_.”

Bucky could not answer this for a minute; and then, wounded and scared and furious at how badly he wished it could be true, he said, “Fuck you.”

“I’m serious,” Chris said. “Though if you are too…no. I don’t know. I would, but I’m thinking about Seb and you’re in love with Steve. Plus you’d probably break me in half with your giant super-soldier dick, not that that’s not an awesome way to go, and, I mean, I would. Like I said. You’re you, and it’s confusing as hell, because you look like Seb but you’re not Seb but you’re a good guy, the kind of guy I would—and also I keep thinking about how you’d feel fuckin’ amazing on top of me or under me but it’s also fuckin’ weird. Shit. Sorry. My point is, about you…don’t just decide I’m wrong. Think about it. If we see it, if people in another dimension see it…”

“Then you’re _all_ fucking interdimensionally wrong,” Bucky said, “and you don’t deserve my giant super-soldier dick,” which was something at least one of his selves would’ve said to Steve, once or twice upon a time. Here and now it made Chris Evans laugh, which worked for the intended external deflection.

That deflection did not work on Bucky’s chest, which felt odd. Tight and sore and empty, like somebody’d been playing around with his heart. His heart knew what it was for: it was for loving Steve Rogers and keeping that love locked up tight so as not to be a burden. Chris Evans had put a key into that lock and turned it, and the teeth caught and tore at edges of possibility.

If someone, somewhere, looked at Sebastian Stan—the sweetest guy on the planet, with a smile that could light up the world, according to one very biased account—and saw even a glimpse of some impossible Bucky Barnes, that meant—

He did not know what that meant.

The rain chattered and sang, as if offering an answer. Bucky spoke a lot of languages these days, but raindrop code had not been required.

He closed both eyes for a moment; he opened them to find Chris’s gaze steady on his.

Chris said, “Bucky—”

That half-forgotten phone made a sound. A few more sounds.

They both sat up in time with the roll of thunder.

Chris was getting replies. Some people thought it was a joke; some people thought it was for a new superhero film; some of them took his questions about interdimensional portals and ritual linguistics—Bucky’d explained about the batrachian chanting—seriously. The science and philology and history and literature and Star Trek fan denizens of twitter and other social media chimed in. Loudly.

“Huh,” Bucky said, reading over Chris’s shoulder. “They have ideas.”

“They do.” Chris looked up. “I don’t know if it’ll work. We’d need specialized equipment for some of these suggestions. But we could do some of it. I think we really _could_. We could try.”

“Stark has the tech for some of this,” Bucky said, reading ahead. “Wakanda has even more. Shuri could handle that…oh, or that…maybe, yeah.” He looked at Chris; found Chris looking at him. “Maybe.”

“We’ll need a couple things. This book, in case the author actually got a phrase right by accident and the sound does fuckin’ resonate with the hyperstrings of the multiverse…getting you back to the exact spot, as close to the exact same time of day, and hoping they’re trying too, over there…”

Bucky said, “Where do I get this book? Lovecraft, H.P.” The Winter Soldier could liberate a book from anywhere. Even if there were armed guards. Maybe especially if the guards were armed.

“You know there’s a simple answer to things,” Chris Evans said. “The internet. Looking it up right now.”

“I know about the internet,” Bucky said. “I was there when it was invented. By the way, Steve only pretends not to know about technology because he can’t resist making fun of people who assume he’s a fossil, so I hope you’re playing him in the movies as the goddamn punk asshole he is.”

“And you love him.” Chris waved the phone vaguely. “Collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. On my laptop, and on here. You’ll have to find the phrase that sounds right. How fast do you read?”

“Pretty fucking fast,” Bucky said.

“Figured.” Chris got up, stretched, went over too-casually to the laptop on the bed. “Sounds like the best chance might be tomorrow afternoon. Getting you into the same spot and hoping they’ve figured out a way to tap into temporal resonances, or that’s what this person says, on the other side. You staying here tonight?”

Bucky Barnes looked at Chris Evans. At the rain cascading like silk down hotel windowpanes; at the warm gold light and rumpled white counterpane of the bed, and the aching brittle valiant stitches holding Chris together.

Bucky Barnes knew those stitches intimately. Made of every single casual touch, every joke, every gift of iced coffee in one universe and every hurtling weapon deflected from Steve’s back in the other. A pain like kindness, cruel as affection.

He did not especially want to go out into the rain. It was unnecessary, given the digital acquisition of books, and might interfere with optimum functionality.

He liked the chair he’d been sitting in. He liked cozy thick mattresses and blankets; he’d learned that about this version of himself, that he did like those things.

He did not want Chris Evans to be alone. This was not about sex, and it was not about Steve, though both those ideas were loosely jumbled up and present but not at the forefront.

He had a headache, not a bad one, but persistent. None of his selves had ever been a physicist or a physician, and he wondered whether being in the wrong universe could physically weaken him. If it could cause harm.

If that harm would then in turn harm Sebastian Stan.

He said nothing about the headache to Chris Evans. No point. Nothing that could be repaired, if his guess was right, and if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter. Either way, no need to cause further distress.

Chris Evans was kind, and was trying to help, and needed help in turn. They could face this together. Shoulder to shoulder. Metaphorically speaking.

Chris had not once, all evening, flinched from the whirr and motion of Bucky’s arm; even concealed under clothing, it was present.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, half-matching Chris’s determinedly accepting tone, casual and resolute. “As tactically sound as anyplace, I guess. Especially if there’s pizza.”

“Pizza,” Chris said.

“I like pepperoni,” Bucky said, kicking off boots, stepping out of socks. The carpet felt as luxurious as it promised to be. The Winter Soldier registered the sensation but found the desire for it perplexing.

Bucky Barnes grinned and peeled off his jacket, kept knives in easy reach, swooped in and grabbed Chris’s laptop and blew a kiss that direction—after all, that Boston accent’d been the one to say it, even if right about the weirdness, and Bucky Barnes could still appreciate an appreciation-worthy man—when Chris made a startled but amused sound.

He flopped back into his overstuffed chair, which had an excellent vantage point for both window and door as well as nicely cushioned armrests. “And I got a lot of reading to do.”

“Good thing you read fast,” Chris agreed. “I’ll get us pepperoni.”

 

The Avengers liked pizza, it turned out. Sebastian also liked pizza, so that worked well for everyone involved. Tony Stark had a favorite place that delivered enough for superhero appetites, no questions asked; in fact, Tony said, they had multiple favorite places, one near each of the bases, and then took the last piece with artichokes on it, and waved the piece while talking. “How’s your room? How’s your head? It's a very nice head and also we need it to get Cap’s boyfriend back, so that’s both aesthetic and professional concern. Garlic bread?”

Sebastian took the garlic bread both out of self-defense—it was in his face—and also because he did indeed like garlic, and wanted it. “My head is trying to process having the actual Tony Stark call it nice. No, seriously, I’ve still got that headache, but it’s not bad. Whatever you gave me took the edge off.” He was sitting on the lab’s diagnostic bed because that’d been where the pizza’d turned up. Both Tony and Bruce Banner, plus a virtual version of Princess Shuri waving from Wakanda, kept poking readouts and projections.

He’d been given—within limits—the freedom of the tower. Little glowing guide-lights and a helpful elevator had shown him to his room, which had a dazzling ocean view and technology that put Sebastian’s own Apple-related love affair into tiny perspective. He’d been allowed to access any media he wanted, and he’d done that for a while, diving headlong into this world, the world that’d previously been a wild fantasy. He’d lost himself in stories, details, attempts to comprehend this place and the larger-than-life figures and tales, the super and the terrible and the extraordinary.

He loved this world, both his and not; he’d always loved these characters, the sacrifices and complexities and choices. His inner science-fiction and philosophy geek was jumping up and down and shrieking in joy.

He’d even found the gym. The actual Avengers Tower—this secret backup base, anyway—gym. Where the actual Avengers actually worked out, or some of them, sometimes. When not in the much scarier and better equipped training room. Sebastian, being human, was perfectly fine with equipment he could recognize.

That sneaky little thrill bolted down his spine again. He’d used the Avengers’ gym equipment. Amazing. Incredible. Best thing _ever_.

As he’d stepped out of the equally impressive shower he’d gotten a call to come down to the lab if he wanted dinner. He did, so he’d thrown on one set of the comfortable spare lounge pants and t-shirts that he’d found in the closet—in his size, too, which was a bit unnerving in the case of the underwear—and followed the helpful lights that way.

And now he was eating pizza. With the Avengers. Answering Tony Stark. Just a normal weeknight, really.

“Let me know if it gets worse,” Doctor Banner said. “We’ll see what we can do. Shuri, is that hyperstring knitter out of the theoretical stages yet, or—”

“It’s not easy to transport.” Her hands moved, checking a calculation. “And you’d need it in Atlanta. But if I send you these figures, and the dimensions, you should be able to fabricate these parts—here, these ones, that’s the central section—for yourselves, assuming Stark doesn’t decide to enhance it with any unnecessary modifications…”

“Hey,” Tony said. “Was that a comment about the last time we built a quantum artifact locator? That was a comment about the last time we built a quantum artifact locator. And it needed a fedora. You can’t build a quantum Indiana Jones without a fedora.”

“Some of that Asgardian tech might be helpful for the dimensional bridging,” Bruce said. “And, for the record, I was opposed to the fedora.”

“Yeah, you wanted to go with a bullwhip instead.” Tony pointed more garlic bread in Sebastian’s direction. “Fedora. Yes? No?”

“On Harrison Ford,” Sebastian decided, “yes. Did your quantum artifact locator look like Harrison Ford?”

Tony stared at him for a second. “I _knew_ I liked you. Guys, we’re making Mark Two look like Harrison Ford.”

“No we’re not,” said Doctor Banner and Shuri in unison, and went back to amiably debating bridge-structures and dark matter and the proper architecture of temporality-twisting weaving-looms. Tony, about to argue, said instead, “You’re inventing two new elements there, look at that, you’ll need something with twice the density of—” and jumped in with enthusiasm and stray Wizard of Oz references.

Sebastian looked at the last pepperoni pizza. One slice missing, it looked back; neither of them happened to be a genius scientist, and the conversation carried on without them.

“That’s not two new elements, _that_ one already exists—well, I’m fairly sure it does—”

“How are your seven PhDs only _fairly_ sure about the existence of something—?”

“That’s how having a PhD works! You get less sure about everything!”

Steve Rogers had not come down to the lab for dinner and genteel scientific bickering and human presence. Sebastian considered the almost-full pizza box again, and said softly, “Friday? Do you know where Captain America is? Only tell me if it’s okay that I’m asking. And if he’s somewhere that’s…not personal. Or private.”

Tony’s house and assistant and brilliant artificial intelligence hummed quietly for a moment—unnecessary, but she’d picked up that humanity appreciated some interaction—and then said, “Captain Rogers is in the kitchen. He is alone, but I suspect he could use some company. He has been staring at the refrigerator for eight minutes and fifteen seconds.”

“Thanks,” Sebastian said, and picked up the pizza and went out. If the firework-eruption of scientists behind him noticed later, Friday could tell them; he wasn’t worried.

Steve Rogers was indeed in the kitchen. He had made coffee and was staring at it instead of the refrigerator now, standing by a tall wide window and not taking a sip; he turned at Sebastian’s footsteps. His shoulders stopped being soundlessly tired and straightened up; his eyes were heroically blue and determined to be of use. “What did you need? How can I help? I thought they had everything handled in the lab, we’ll get you over to Atlanta tomorrow for the temporal concurrence, and Nat and Sam will be back with that Asgardian matter stabilizer in two hours—”

“I just brought pizza,” Sebastian said, shoving the box in Captain America’s direction, nearly dropping it, silently swearing at his own habitual clumsiness, and managing to rescue the pie and land it safely on the counter. “I thought you might be hungry. Um. Not because you need someone reminding you to eat. Because maybe you like pizza. Or, um, food in general. I don’t need help, I’m okay, really.”

“How’s your head? How’re you feeling?” Steve’s voice was concerned, a soldier caring for one of his men; Steve’s hand was white-knuckled around the coffee-mug. Bucky Barnes, somewhere, would be hurting too. “Did you have a question or somethin’?”

The hint of Brooklyn flared and faded like heartbreak, like memory, like ink on a love-letter; beyond the window, night hung like a broken shield over the ocean.

Steve Rogers deserved the truth. Sebastian flipped the pizza box open and threw a smile toward all that stubborn self-sacrificing pain. “Little bit of a headache. Not any worse. They said we’ve got time. And I trust you guys.”

“The Avengers,” Steve said, low and almost bitter: sharpness like the bite of snow, the glint of metal from an arm or a knife or a cruel painful chair. “Earth’s mightiest heroes. And I keep _losing_ him—”

He stopped, very quickly, and set his coffee down as if afraid the mug—or something else—might crack.

“About that,” Sebastian said, and came over to Captain America’s side. “First, is there more coffee? Thanks. I practically live on caffeine. Especially in the mornings. Chris makes fun of me, and then brings me more.” He had to stop there, because the pain stabbed at his chest like espresso-hot claws.

Chris had sounded so _afraid_ for him. And would be in such pain, that big generous beautiful heart bewildered and devastated and scoured by inexplicable loss, that heart that always felt so much, cared so much for the world…

Sebastian wasn’t about to assume Chris’s heart cared in any special way about _him_ , but even for a friend the wounds would be real. And if, just maybe—if Chris had been going to say yes to Sebastian’s question about dinner—if Mackie’d been right about the blushing and teasing and flirting—if there’d been even the smallest most infinitesimal chance—

Probably there wasn’t. Probably that’d been Chris being kind, being a friend. But either way Chris was presently in another universe, and could not bring over a mid-morning iced coffee with a laughing, _just makin’ sure you got your caffeine fix for the day, I’ve seen you without it…_

 Steve Rogers said, “Chris?”

“Oh—Chris Evans. He, um, he’s you. In the movies.” He gazed down into his newly acquired mug for a moment. Sympathetic steam kissed his face. “Like I play Bucky Barnes. Which is what I was going to say.”

“That you play Bucky? You told us. And I know what movies are. I’m a hundred years old, not dead.”

“Gee, thanks, Captain America.” Sebastian briefly forgot about world-saving iconic status, gave Steve Rogers the same exact look he’d’ve given Chris or Mackie, panicked because _holy shit I’m being sarcastic at the honest-to-god Captain America,_ and then decided that Steve’d started it. “And here over on our Earth we thought you were innocent and wholesome. Seriously, though, you and Chris are a lot alike. Ready to go out and punch bullies and protect people and take on the world, and then you make jokes about being nothing special…”

“I’m not.” Steve Rogers shut those eyes for a moment, a glimpse of vulnerability that got scooped back up and stuffed behind stubborn walls. A muscle moved in his jaw. “I never was. Just a kid from Brooklyn, someone who wanted to do some good.”

“You are. You do.”

“I can never save him—every damn time—I can never be _enough_ for him—”

“For Bucky.” Sebastian leaned against the wall beside the window, letting it take some weight, cradling heat between palms. His head did hurt, but in a distant far-off way, and he thought that was partly from emotion. “I don’t know how much about how this works, but the Science Bros in the lab did talk about dimensional bleed and ripples, so maybe it’ll mean something. You’ve always been enough. For him. Bucky Barnes.”

Steve stared at him. Turned to face the night, a flinch of battle-honed muscle; turned back. “…Science Bros. That’s perfect. You don’t need to make me feel better. You got enough to worry about.”

“Yeah, I do, and so do you, so let me try to help. Sorry. But it’s true.”

A ghost of a smile flickered around Steve’s lips, eyes, posture. “You do sound like him.”

“Good?”

“You’re him and you’re not him.” Steve breathed the words as if they were a confession: intimate, bruised to the core, holy. “I look at you and I see him—but not him, more like someone he could’ve been, or used to be…he used to smile. He used to laugh. When we were kids, when he bought a new science-fiction magazine or read about someone’s idea for a rocket that could go to the Moon…when the radio played a song that he liked, and he’d jump in and start dancing along without thinking twice about it, and he’d make me dance even though I was all elbows and black eyes from fighting, and I’d say no, Buck, you know I can’t do that, not like you can, but somehow he’d make me want to anyway, stupid and clumsy and holding onto him in the kitchen where he’d just been doin’ dishes because I forgot again…”

“He’s a good man.” Sebastian dared, very lightly, to put a hand on Captain America’s shoulder. “He’s been hurt and he’s finding a way—not back, I think, but forward. He’s a hero. I hope I’m doing him justice.”

“I’d say,” Steve Rogers said, half under his breath, possibly unconsciously leaning into Sebastian’s touch, “you are.”

“Thanks. But my point is…look, I’m _not_ him. I know. I’m me. I get quiet around people I want to impress and I once walked into a refrigerator while staring at Robert Redford—um, a famous actor I had to work with. I drink way too much coffee and accidentally tell people that I _like_ being told what to do. Um. Like I sort of told you just now. But anyway if I am him, sometimes, a little, then at least maybe I can tell you what my version thinks. About you.”

Steve’s lips parted, but no words came out; might’ve been processing all of Sebastian’s flailing words, or finding hope in them, or waiting for more.

Sebastian gulped down some coffee. Fortified, went on, “He’s always loved you. He _loves_ you. Bucky. My Bucky. You’ve always been…you’re Steve Rogers. The kid who’ll stand up for people who need it, who’ll jump in and take a stand, who makes the world better and brighter and sort of shinier, more the way it ought to be. Bucky’d follow that kid anywhere. Shield or no shield.”

“But I let him down.” Steve’s shoulders tensed. “I let him get hurt saving me, again—I’m here and he’s gone because he had my back, _again_ —”

“Because he wants to,” Sebastian said. “Because that’s his choice. Because he’s _choosing_ that. And don’t tell me you don’t do that, too. Trying to save him. You do try. You do save him. Seeing you, knowing you, wanting to come back to you—that’s an anchor. And just that—that can be enough.”

Steve Rogers whispered to Sebastian, to the night, to the silent kitchen, “You said he loves me.”

“My version does. And Chris—Chris plays it that way too. As you. We can’t make it too obvious—studios, audiences, all of that—but we’ve talked about it.” He slid the hand to Steve’s back, offered a rub: the way he might with a friend, a lonely fan, someone in need of comfort. Sebastian knew about comfort and loneliness and the need for touch; he’d been there too often to not give whatever he could in turn. “I don’t know if all that means anything, but I thought you should know.”

One corner of Steve’s mouth tilted upward. “And you brought pizza.”

Sebastian shrugged. “I like pizza.”

“Your Chris,” Steve said, “is—is a lucky man. To have you. We’ll get you back to him.”

“Oh. Well.” Faced with this earnestness, Sebastian lifted the hand away. Hid behind coffee. “He doesn’t…we’re not…it’s not like that. Him and me.”

“Oh.” Steve blushed. “Sorry. I assumed—when you said you’ve talked about it, about us—the way you said his name, I thought—”

“I know.” He put one hand up, rubbed a temple. Head pounding more. “You’re not wrong. At least, not about how _I_ feel.”

“Oh,” Steve said again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it. Being his friend.”

Steve hesitated. Then stretched out a hand, big and careful and almost shy. Brushed fingers over Sebastian’s temple as well, unerringly finding the location of the dull throb. “Getting worse? And…is this okay? If I touch you.”

Sebastian looked across into those weary honest blue eyes. Felt the warmth through every atom of self: not sexual, or mostly not, but here and real and present, offered and shared. He needed that; they both needed that. “Absolutely yes. Please.”

Steve did that almost-smile again and tugged him closer, endearingly bashful and firm at once. “You said you like following orders.”

“Oh, fuck, no,” Sebastian protested halfheartedly. He’d been pretending he hadn’t. In front of Captain America. “What even are words. I’m a walking internet joke.”

“It’s not about that,” Steve said. “I just—I just want to—can I hold onto you? And feed you your pizza.”

“Yes,” Sebastian said, “please—if I get to feed you too, that’s why I brought it, remember, you’re not getting out of it,” and Steve Rogers, astonishedly and almost happily, laughed.

They ended up on the sofa in the common room, Sebastian tucked under one of Steve’s solid proprietary arms. Steve Rogers smelled really _excellent_ , some small piece of Sebastian’s brain—and other places—noted: clean and woodsy and masculine. And Steve was adorably awkwardly good at cuddling, as if having always wanted to use the new large body to do that for someone: for someone in particular, named Bucky Barnes.

Steve held him and held onto him and fed him another piece of pizza while inhaling the rest of it; those blue eyes looked mildly guilty halfway through. Sebastian waved a hand and said, “It was for you anyway, I already had some, and _I’ll_ feel better if you eat it.”

Steve Rogers gave him an unimpressed eye-roll and said, “I know what you’re doing, you know,” and then ate the pizza. Sebastian permitted himself a grin, and curled more closely into Captain America’s height and bulk and heat, because that felt nice.

Bucky Barnes would like that too, he thought. And he knew without asking that Steve was thinking that, hoping that, as well. Not something to try if they got Bucky back, if they succeeded tomorrow.

 _When_ they did.

Sebastian had to believe that. They both had to.

Steve ran a hand over him, someplace between a caress and a clinging. After a minute, asked for the lights to be lowered, as if hoping that’d be good for Sebastian’s headache, and guided Sebastian’s head to rest against him, and began to rub Sebastian’s neck, the spot at the base of his skull, the places craving attention: kneading sorenesses and strain into less of each, careful with strength.

Stars glittered like promises peeking through indigo satin, beckoning through clear tall glass. In another universe, Bucky Barnes and Chris Evans would be finding their own answers; neither of them, Sebastian thought, would simply sit back and accept what’d happened without at least trying to understand. Like heroes.

He wished he could lean into Chris’s strength, so much like Steve’s and so much not, just like this. He wished he could make whatever hurt Chris might be feeling go away or at least get easier to bear, and maybe Chris could do that for him sometimes, if Chris wanted to, once in a while; they could do that for each other, forever. He’d be happy with that.

He let Steve Rogers guard him and keep him safe, for now, for tonight; and they both watched the stars.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Clocks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144288) by [SebStanborn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SebStanborn/pseuds/SebStanborn)




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